The Hornsea offshore wind farms are off the east coast of England. There are several projects, all quite expensive. For example…
Hornsea Two and Moray East were completed in 2022 with capital costs of £2.77 billion per GW and £2.75bn/GW, more than four times the cost of CCGT [Combined Cycle Gas Turbine] capacity. They’re expensive to maintain, which is not surprising since offshore windfarms have all their many generators mounted at the top of 200-metre tall masts far away from land. Estimates of maintenance costs are as high as £200m per GW installed, per annum …
Huge subsidies are necessary. From 2023:
Orsted says huge UK Hornsea 3 wind project at risk without government action
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/orsted-says-huge-uk-hornsea-3-wind-project-risk-without-government-action-2023-03-03/
Today we find that Orsted has backed out of the Hornsea 4 project.
The Hornsea 4 project would have become one of the biggest offshore wind farms in the world with a potential capacity of 2.4GW – enough to power more than a million homes. Orsted said the project no longer made economic sense, despite signing a 15-year contract with the UK government guaranteeing to sell power at an agreed price…
Just over half of the country’s power currently comes from wind, solar, nuclear and biomass – organic matter. The government wants to raise that to 95% by 2030 – so in just five years’ time.
In order to meet that target the UK will need to triple offshore wind capacity and double the amount of solar and onshore wind power on the system, according to estimates by Aurora Energy. It will also need a significant upgrade to the electricity grid with 620 miles of new power lines as well as substations and other equipment.
DB2